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EU May Allow US To Keep Snooping On European Bank Data
zaphod2 alerts us to a storm brewing in Europe over access by US intelligence agencies to EU banking data. There is considerable opposition in Europe to extending this access. The submitter adds, "I wonder how long it takes until gambling, online games, or non-RIAA-approved music shops are considered supporters of terrorism." "US anti-terror officials want to be able to continue examining Europeans' financial transactions, and it appears likely that the European Union is going to comply. ... The US has been examining transactions handled by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Transactions (SWIFT) since the 9/11 attacks... However, SWIFT, which is located in Belgium, is planning to move its servers and database — which is currently located in the US — to Europe. With data privacy laws far stricter in Europe, the US would then need permission from the EU before it could gain access to this sensitive information."
Yes, it's all down to tax havens. All the biggest problems in the current crisis are down to those damnable tax havens and hedge funds etc. Like the following, all HQ'ed and "regulated" in well known tax havens:
AIG: New York
Lehman Brothers: New York
Bear Sterns: New York
Merill Lynch: New York
Citibank: New York
RBS: London
Fortis: Belgium
Lloyds/HBOS: Edinburgh
Glitnir Kaupthing & Landsbanki: Iceland
Yes, if only those damn tax havens listed above were banned from doing business, the financial crisis would not have happened. If only banks were forced to be in "well regulated" onshore locations where there is accountability, there would be no recession. And as we all know, bankers, lawyers and their associates in major cities are all highly ethical people, whereas Swiss bankers or lawyers in the Cayman Islands are just fine with you calling them up and asking them to transfer funds to your friend "Omar" in Tashkent with no explanation or supporting documents.
Yes, it's all down to tax havens. All the biggest problems in the current crisis are down to those damnable tax havens and hedge funds etc. Like the following, all HQ'ed and "regulated" in well known tax havens:
Institutions in developed countries were directly responsible for the crisis but Tax havens payed a very important role in hiding transactions.
Except that the op-ed link you provides no particular argument for how it particularly links to the crisis. The author is against tax havens on general principles, and believes banks make too much use of them, but doesn't really explain what they particularly have to do with the current problems. The main transactions involved are things like poor underwriting of mortgages (onshore) and packaging of those mortgages into complex opaque securities. The packaging into CDO/ABS etc sometimes involved an offshore fund for tax reasons but what they were basically doing was in no way concealed or secretive, not like hedge funds. It's not that subprime mortgages were sneaked into these things by some shady character - it is that the modelling and risk assumptions were way off.
Swiss bankers or lawyers in the Cayman Islands are just fine with you calling them up and asking them to transfer funds to your friend "Omar" in Tashkent with no explanation or supporting documents
Yes, they are. That's their job. That's what the fiscal havens are for. And not only Omar, you can also transfer a few millions to your friend Pablo in Colombia, or to your friend Alphonse in Congo.
Don't be naive. The underground economy worldwide moves billions every year. Where do you think the money financing drug, weapons, etc. comes from? Do the criminals/warlords/terrorists pull it from their asses? No, it comes from the legal economy, through fiscal havens.
No they aren't. This is just a blanket assertion that bears more relation to John Grisham thrillers than it does to reality. If it were just a matter of banning money transfers to places with poor money-laundering controls it would have been easily fixed years ago. The problem is that most of the tax havens DO have money laundering rules in place, and in many cases did so before some of the big jurisdictions. If you want to set up an anonymous company, do so in Delaware - all you need is a valid credit card and a postal address in the state. Try getting away with that anywhere else and watch as the US Federal government goes berserk and puts the country on the FATF blacklist. Oh but I forgot - the Vice President is from that state so the chances of a bill to get Delaware to have proper money-laundering controls is remote (and would probably be challenged on "States rights" grounds).
Money laundering involves onshore businesses to turn cash into bank balances (typically business such as antiques, where profits are arbitrary, or cash-handling businesses like restaurants etc). Money laundering also involves the criminal wanting to spend the bank balances, usually onshore. Throwing an offshore location into the scheme will just bring more scrutiny when you are making unusual offshore transfers. Often it would not even theoretically be a good idea. I'm not saying that nobody has ever used an offshore bank to make illegal payments, that would be ridiculous. The idea that it is easy, or that nobody cares what you do with an offshore bank account is not true and diverts attention from onshore money laundering.
Many large countries have thousands of pages of complex, overlapping tax law, and when you have more than one country in the mix the result is even less likely to be consistent. Most tax haven activity involves finding contradictions in the laws and using them until one or other law in changed. The way to cut back on tax haven activity would be to make the laws simpler, not add more pages of regulations.